Perspectives from an English Historian who just happens to be Gay, Catholic, and a Democratic Socialist. Now back in the UK after 20 years of living in the United States. The Blog is eclectic in covering all these sides of my Life. Follow on Twitter at PaulBHalsall

Monday, October 05, 2009

Tory Class Warfare

The welfare policy announced at the Tory conference this week is just open class warfare by the Tories.

The problem is that, after James Purnell adopted the same pogram against the poor from the same advisor (David Freud), Labour has little to say on this issue.

I am not really interested in what the usual Tory trolls say here.

Cameronism, the policies from David Cameron, a man with inherited wealth, and who owns £1000 dining room chairs, amounts to trying to take £25 a week from people trying to live on £89 per week. Why? To deal with a fiscal deficit created by bankers?

Toryism is not stupid (like the right in the US), but constitutes a pure and evil class-based attack on the poorest.

The deficit has been caused by the bankers' depression. The most this pogram is meant to get back is £1 billion, yet the annual government spend is £600 billion. So 1/6th of 1% will not help at all. But it will make the poor poorer and terrify even those like me, where the medical evdience is, shall we say, overwhelming.

Meanwhile Tory and Labour donors avoid tax to £12-15 billion in UK run tax havens like Bermuda or the Cayman islands.

It is just sick to blame and attack the poor for the failure of capitalism.

I wish Labour could motivate the vote of welfare recipients and public employees just to save themselves from the coming onslaught. But the fact is that traitors like Purnell have made that all but impossible.

6 comments:

Depressed. And deluded. Class Warfare? You forget that most of the Labour front bench went to independent fee-paying schools and lead lives of privilege, to the extent that they believe they do not have to report car crashes to the police or be honest about their expenses.

I am not sure where you get the idea that someone is blaming the poor for the failure of Capitalism. Who is doing this?

You write:

I wish Labour could motivate the vote of welfare recipients and public employees just to save themselves from the coming onslaught.

Motivation requires intelligence, reflection and action. None of these are qualities I notice in most welfare recipients. Why enfranchise a group of people who have no interest in the world or society?

You may argue that they can be educated, and I am all in favour of the best free education we can give them, (cf Paulo Freire) but you will have to drag them kicking and screaming and somehow that isn't right is it?

Your personal attack on Cameron would be comical if it was not so earnest. How do you think the middle classes live? Do you think Ed Balls and Harriet Harman sit in the snug discussing whippets over a pint of stout?

(ps, I am no Tory troll. I voted Labour in 1997, and after Iraq, said "never again" For the record, I am resident in Scotland and can therefore vote SNP)

"Mandelson may be intelligent and slick and the party’s best hope, but as a figurehead for a movement that preaches the gospel of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, what possessed him to wear a £21,500 Patek Philippe watch to make his big speech?"

Tax credits or various kinds, increases in welfare for women, the liberation of Iraq, the very successful battle by various means against Islamo-fascism, the record years of growth and the leadrship against the recession are just a few of the great achievements of this Labour Governent.

Oh and not a few fools have grown older and more conservative, as many people always have, and their rancour and bitterness spills on the internet like battery acid to nefarious purposes. This is no time for despair.

If Labour makes mistakes, they are nothing compared to those in prospect from the wannabe maistres of the Tory Party.

Chameleon is due to inherit millions, and the Death Duties proposals Osborne hopes to bring in are said to reduce his parents' estate's liability by £500,000.

Dully Tele journos have often found him aloof and arrogant.

He is happiest with those whose social and economic background narrowly matches his own: he married the daughter of a Bullingdon, appointed a Bullingdon as his Leadership Campaign manager, and then as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and invited another to be his preferred candidate for London Mayor.

Membership of the Bullingdon restaurant smashing social Club is open only to the very rich by invitation.

When Chameleon set up his first Shadow cabinet he appointed more old Etonians than Macmillan dod to his cabinet. If people had not complained that this was ludicrously snobbish likely the situation would still be much the same.

Chameleon and Osborne ARE class warriors.

I wish I could find anything amusing about Weasel's delusions at this time of the morning . . . Perhaps that id belongs to one of the Dully Teles who made so many dire predictions that somewhere, most likely in some colonial outpost, readers armed with their blunderbusses await Labour Cabinet Minsters from Mars . . .

I would like to add to your comment Wrinkled Weasel...I agree with you on this one. Most recipients of welfare you would have to drag kicking and screaming to get an education, to get a suitable job, to provide for their families....and so on. If one were to use the system rather than the system use them, welfare would not become a career. The help to better ones self is there, however all too often we find people with complacency. Too comphy with getting a free ride.